Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Jose Ortega y. Gasset (Spanish Philosopher)

Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) was a Spanish critic, journalist, and philosopher. He greatly influenced the cultural and literary renaissance of Spain in the 20th century.

Born in Madrid, Ortega studied at Madrid University (1898–1904) and was a professor from 1911. He also lived in South America and Portugal (1931–46.) Meditaciones del Quijote (1914; Meditations on Quixote, 1961) outlines national symbols in Spanish literature and compares them with others. In El tema de nuestro tiempo (1923, ‘Modern Theme,’) he argues that great philosophies demarcate their epochs’ cultural horizons.

Ortega’s best-known work, La rebelión de las masas (1930; The Revolt of the Masses, 1932,) foreshadowed the Spanish Civil War. Often mistakenly taken as a right-wing and elitist document, it is a masterly analysis of the 20th-century situation in which the masses have revolted against minorities. He corrected any possible ambiguities inherent in this book in his posthumous El hombre y la gente (1957; Man and People, 1957.)

Ortega introduced Marcel Proust and James Joyce to Spain, and his writing has radically influenced the majority of Spanish writers of his time and after him.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jose Ortega y. Gasset

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Decisions

Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafes full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: People

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Living, Life

Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Youth

Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Living, Life, Change

We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Thoughts, Thought

Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Opinion, Opinions

The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the cafe.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Artists, Arts, Art

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Things, Little Things

Liberalism—it is well to recall this today—is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Liberalism

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Understanding

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Excellence

Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

The cynic, a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Cynicism

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Government

An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Purpose, Unemployment, Work

Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect, they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Goals, Change, Conviction, Aspirations

Minorities are individual or groups of individuals especially qualified. The masses are the collection of people not specially qualified.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Creativity

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Power, Civilization

Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Realization, Awareness, Acceptance

Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Thought

Poetry is adolescence fermented and thus preserved
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Poetry

The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Discontent

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Ideas

A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Revolution, Revolutionaries, Revolutions

We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, “here and now” without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: The Present, Living

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